On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 19:22:20 +0000, Chris Quayle
>Have just bought an F4 via Ebay, with a fault, which is now fixed. Have
>run a few films through it in the past couple of weeks, using ai lenses
>and just love the ergonomics and simplicity in use. The metering is
>superb, as are all the mechanical camera style dials and it has none of
>the lcd display nonsense and where is the right frigging menu stuff
>which seems to be on all the modern slr's. Have an F3 which I never
>really bonded with in the same way, even after a couple of years of use,
>so I guess it must be serious.
I like the F3's size and its bit better VF; my hands don't
fit the F4 at all well - it is too big (though otherwise
it is excellent...). Also, since I generally carry two
identical bodies in a bag with 4 lenses, the weight and
size of the F4 made this difficult - it is the one "F"
I never owned (well, longer than overnight, anyway...;-).
>As a mechanical camera nut,
The F4 is hardly "mechanical" - it is a very "electronic"
camera, but without the usual LCD interface...;-)
>even discussing AF is like sleeping with the
>enemy,
The AF on Nikons did not become very reliable until the
F100 and F5, BTW...
>but there are situations where a good quality AF tele or zoom in
>the 200-300 max range would be very usefull.
This range, and macro, are the two areas where AF is least
useful for me - it is easy to manually focus (and hold
focus, without the lens wildly refocusing when shifted
off target...) at tele...
>Trouble is, there are so
>many different types of nikkor AF lenses. From what i've read, af-g
>wont't work, but there's also the original AF series, AF-I, AF-S and
>AF-D.
All AF lenses will work but for the two original AF
lenses and the AF-G lenses...
>Something like the [8]0-200 f2.8 ED AF looks ideal, but how well
>built are they ?. What i'm really after are lenses with the build
>quality and feel of standard non AF Nikkor series.
All versions of the 80-200mm Nikkor are excellent optically
and in construction quality...
>What do the panel think and is the ED version of the AF 80-200 very much
>better than the non ED version ?.
There is no non-ED version of the f2.8; all others are non-ED
but still excellent. See for more on Nikkors:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/slemn.html.
>What are the good AF series to look
>out for, neglecting the AF-s series, which are far too expensive even
>s/hand ?...
See the URL, above...